There is a desire to provide medical practitioners (e.g. surgeons, interventional radiologists, nurses, medical assistants, other medical technicians and/or the like) with access to, the ability to manipulate and/or the ability to otherwise interact with medically relevant information during the performance of medical procedures (e.g. surgical procedures and/or the like). Such desired medical information may include, by way of non-limiting example, radiological images, angiography images, other forms of images of the patient's body, other information relevant to a patient undergoing the medical procedure, other information relevant to the procedure itself, other information related to the condition being treated and/or the like. Such desired medical information may be procured prior to performing the procedure and/or during performance of the procedure and may allow medical practitioners to formulate or alter their therapeutic plan during image-guided medical procedures.
Currently, intra-procedural access to, manipulation of and/or interaction with radiological images takes place on computer workstations in control rooms located outside of the surgical sterile environment. Such workstations may access, via suitable network communications or other digital access techniques, archives of image data pertaining to a patient by accessing picture archiving and communication systems (PACS); digital imaging and communications in medicine systems (DICOM), hospital information systems (HIS), radiological information systems (RIS) and/or the like. Such workstations may then display individual images on a suitable display and may permit manipulation of the images via a conventional computer-based user interface—e.g. using a mouse and keyboard and a software-implemented user interface. Because the workstations are located outside of the surgical sterile environment, radiologists wanting to access various images typically have to either: (a) scrub out of a procedure on one or more occasions during the procedure; or (b) delegate the task of accessing the desired image(s) to a technologist, who then has to operate the workstation under the direction of the radiologist.
In case (a), the need to move back and forth between the non-sterile control room and the sterile surgical environment for purposes of image navigation and interpretation may: increase the risk of contaminating the sterile environment by inadvertently transferring contaminants from the non-sterile control room into the sterile environment; extend the time required to complete the surgery, thereby increasing procedural costs; and/or interrupt the medical practitioner's cognitive focus, thereby increasing the medical risk for the patient. In case (b), close communication between the radiologists and the technician operating the workstation is typically required. Communication of relevant information (e.g. how much to move or enlarge an image) is difficult and time-consuming and may require several iterations. This process may be made more difficult by the need to use different software platforms, to navigate through vendor-specific multi-layered menus, and to interact with volumetric images using a keyboard and mouse.
With an increasing reliance on numerous radiological images for intra-procedural planning and confirmation of targeted therapy, there is a general desire to develop solutions that improve the radiologist's ability to rapidly access, manipulate and/or otherwise interact with large amounts of image information (and/or other medically relevant information) in an intuitive, comprehensive, and timely manner while in the sterile environment.
The foregoing examples of the related art and limitations related thereto are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of the related art will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon a reading of the specification and a study of the drawings.